Dear Ruth,
I attended your excellent presentation today (May 13th) at Plymouth Church. I’m the older guy who left at 9:28 – in order to be on time for the morning rehearsal of Plymouth’s adult choir.
This is the question I wanted to ask: To what extent do you think your current situation was influenced by the fact that you were originally a left-handed female.
Background to the question: (1) I am fairly certain it is the case that left-handed people are better with their right hands than vice versa. (2) My research in math education resulted in the following: Whereas girls outscore boys in arithmetic computation tests, boy outscore girls in novel math problem solving tests (beginning in the second grade – the earliest grade in which tests are at all reliable), and whereas left-handed students outscore right-handed students on those novel tests, again from second grade on, left-handed girls outscore right-handed boys on those tests.
(I earned my Ph.D. at Harvard in 1973 – in educational research.)

Thank you for your kind comments. I loved the worship service that followed my presentation. The music was glorious. And attendees of my presentation got a double dose of input on change! I was very pleased with the similarity in my message and the sermon’s main points – forgiveness, patience and being open.
Answer to your question: I am not a researcher, but I can agree that my left-handedness was probably a factor in my accommodation to switching dominance. I was the only child of 7 to be left handed – and at the time, schools made very few – actually no accommodation to allow for left-handedness, nor is the rest of the world arranged for easy accommodation for left handedness. In my opinion, the statistics for lefties being more accident prone, have as much to do with the fact that most appliances and machines are made for right hand use – therefore demanding accommodation and adaptation in their use by lefties. I always used right handed scissors. I undoubtedly did have a certainly facility with my right hand. As far as the female/male portion of your question, I defer to your knowledge and research. I can assure you that writing and eating were very challenging for me. I still think I do not handle my fork in a very comfortable way, and my italian friends tell me I twirl my spaghetti in a left-handed direction. Thank you for this interesting question! And thank you for coming today.